Up Rainier, one step -- or 12 -- at a time

By BLYTHE LAWRENCE, P-I REPORTER

Updated
10:00 pm PDT, Friday, August 4, 2006

Eve Ruff trains on Capitol Hill's Lakeview stairs with Meghan Galvin, left, and Corey Kelman in preparation to lead a group of women up Mount Rainier later this month. Ruff, a drug and alcohol counselor, has climbed Rainier before, but never sober. less

Eve Ruff trains on Capitol Hill's Lakeview stairs with Meghan Galvin, left, and Corey Kelman in preparation to lead a group of women up Mount Rainier later this month. Ruff, a drug and alcohol counselor, has ... more

Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Eve Ruff trains on Capitol Hill's Lakeview stairs with Meghan Galvin, left, and Corey Kelman in preparation to lead a group of women up Mount Rainier later this month. Ruff, a drug and alcohol counselor, has climbed Rainier before, but never sober. less

Eve Ruff trains on Capitol Hill's Lakeview stairs with Meghan Galvin, left, and Corey Kelman in preparation to lead a group of women up Mount Rainier later this month. Ruff, a drug and alcohol counselor, has ... more

Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Up Rainier, one step -- or 12 -- at a time

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Eve Ruff was leading a double life as she stood at the base of Mount Rainier four years ago.

By day, she was the librarian at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an avid mountain climber who organized climbing trips for breast-cancer survivors, helping them reclaim their bodies one step at a time and one day at a time.

By night, she was drinking herself into a stupor before passing out on her basement couch.

The contradiction wasn't lost on Ruff, who came to Washington in 1979 to climb Mount Rainier and liked it so much she never left. But the idea of a life without alcohol was overwhelming.

Until that July day four years ago, when, snuggled down with a bottle of vodka on the mountain she calls her "lifelong partner," Ruff had a sobering experience.

"I had one of those moments where I thought, 'What am I doing?' " she recalled. "I spent my whole life being committed to helping women recover, and I'm dying."

That night on Rainier, Ruff decided she was going to confront her disease the way the she helped women confront theirs. She came down from the mountain and went into treatment in Arizona.And she made herself a promise that she would return to Rainier sober.

Four years later, Ruff, who left her job at Fred Hutch to become a counselor at the Residence XII treatment facility in Kirkland, is ready to take on the mountain. Climbing with her this month will be 12 other women, each with her own story of addiction and recovery.

All have different reasons for making the climb -- some are going for themselves; some, like Ruff's 23-year-old daughter, to support others -- but all are hoping to raise public awareness that recovery is possible.

"It's very hard for an addict to say you need help," said Joey Coverdale, a Residence XII counselor who went into treatment in 1997 after 31 years as an addict. "I had a very long climb out of my addiction. You hit bottom when you stop digging, and I dug to China many, many times."

Recovery has a stigma, even among many who have been through it, said Susan Burnash, a spokeswoman for Residence XII. "Alcoholics Anonymous' tradition of anonymity has been interpreted as don't talk about being in recovery at all."

Coverdale understands why some shy away from the "addict-in-recovery" label.

Being able to say you're a recovering drug addict is "something that I'm proud of, but it is something that people go 'Oh...' What are people going to think when you say, 'My kid's teacher is a drug addict?' " she said.

The women of Residence XII hope to eliminate some of that stigma and to show others in recovery what they can accomplish by setting healthy goals and working toward them. Whether they make it to the top is secondary.

"Climbing Mount Rainier as a 59-year-old woman is something I never aspired (to)," Coverdale said. "I gave up my whole life for an addiction, and now I get a chance to aspire, to set a goal on something and do it."

It's what keeps them going, getting up in the wee hours of the morning to climb stairs with up to 40 pounds of weight on their backs.

Working out to build muscle is a new concept to Megan Hammond, who started using meth when she was 17.

Hammond was thrilled when the drug caused her to drop 30 pounds. She was less thrilled when it caused her to start picking at her face and led to her expulsion from school.

"I just looked like a wreck," said Hammond, now 22. "I thought I just must have been using it wrong. I didn't really understand that it was the drug. I thought it was me."

The climbers are well aware that they're setting an example for those struggling to get sober. Most have not been out of treatment more than two years.

"The first two years in recovery is such a struggle," Burnash said. "A lot of women don't make it."

Perhaps that's why they've worked so hard raising money to cover equipment costs and establish a Residence XII scholarship for women who can't afford the cost of treatment.

"The most important thing in the world to me is that anyone in the world has access to treatment," Ruff said. "If you're an hourly worker, you probably cannot (afford to) go to treatment."

Two of the women Ruff climbed Mount Rainier with four years ago didn't win their battles against breast cancer. Ruff knows she's conquering her addiction, but she's careful not to let herself think that way too much.

"The disease doesn't go away," she said. "It just goes into remission."

On Aug. 17, they hope to stand at the peak of Mount Rainier as public examples of the power of recovery.